Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

“But it’s not native so it is expendable”

The kauri in our park – a high value native tree beyond reproach but it has taken over 60 years to get this size and is not suitable for most urban settings

I can’t tell you how irritated I get by this sentiment and I have seen it trotted out on several occasions recently. I get irritated because it rarely reflects a thoughtful position. And when you drill down, it only applies to trees. The speaker is just as likely to be drinking tea, coffee or wine – all from imported plant material. Indeed almost 100% of food we eat in this country comes from imported plants originally, even if it is now grown in the backyard. All our fruit, all our vegetables. All our meat is raised on pasture that is comprised of exotic grasses. Our grains are all imported species, as are  our grazing animals. Even the dominant earthworms include many foreigners.

The vast majority of flowers that adorn our gardens or we buy to bring indoors to beautify our environment are of foreign origin. Our forestry industry is built on imported plant species.

All our foods have been imported at some stage of our history. Mark grew a fine range of tomatoes this season – selections from around the world

Most of us live in very heavily modified environments and lead lives that would be totally unsustainable without imported plant material. This is not to say that we should not value and defend the very few pockets of land which remain with vestiges of original vegetation. These are of high value and we should be trying to protect, extend and restore these. But your suburban street, small holding or farm is never going to achieve native plant purity. And only planting dwarf fruit trees is not going to do anything to modify climate change or produce much of the oxygen that we breathe.

Alas, we are also a nation that, in the main, does not value trees and is ready to fell them at the first opportunity. “It is not a native,” is the justification often put up by the chainsaw brigade. (Or, if it is a pohutukawa, “it is a weed”!) That does not mean it is expendable and of no value. The world has even more beautiful trees than delicious food crops. And it takes a lot longer to grow a mature tree than a lettuce or basil plant. Some of those trees will adapt and grow in conditions where few of our native varieties will survive. Most of our native trees evolved in a forested environment, used to growing in company. There are not that many that will adapt to being single specimens or even a row of trees on an exposed coastline or a windswept road verge.

The much maligned and derided Norfolk Island pine

Particular contempt is often reserved for the Norfolk Island pine which does very well in many parts of New Zealand, looking handsome and healthy, even on exposed coastlines. Stop and think for a moment, before you reach for the chainsaw with contemptuous dismissal of this tree. It comes from the same plant family as our native kauri. It also originates on Norfolk Island which is about as close as any ‘foreign’ land gets to us.

A variation on this line is “I only grow plants that are native or edible”. Oh, okay. All of the above arguments apply. It is fine for you to declare that you only want a garden where every plant is either native or edible. Just don’t espouse this viewpoint as though it is the higher moral ground because it is actually quite a naïve position. Lawn and grass should of course be banned in such a garden, unless you are going to locate and harvest one of our native grasses.

What the world needs is more trees to purify the air, to provide oxygen, to enhance eco systems and the environment, to slow down erosion and to modify climate change. I understand that some people do not see any aesthetic value in trees. I don’t agree with that view but I see evidence of it so I must acknowledge that not everybody sees big trees as being something of beauty. But it is no accident that wealthy areas of cities are often referred to as ‘leafy suburbs’. Pretty much without exception, they have established trees to soften the hard concrete and sealed urban landscape. There are not many New Zealand native trees that will tolerate, let alone thrive in the harsh, urban landscape. Rule out exotic trees and all we will have in cities are nikau palms, kowhai and pohutukawa in northern areas.

The problem with trees is that they take 20 years to get established and upwards of forty to start reaching maturity. Yet they can be felled in minutes. But, still many argue, if they are not native, they are of no intrinsic value.

A life without magnolias would be unthinkable for us, but they are anything but native

From the crowds of WOMAD to the peace at home

The main stage, known as the Bowl of Brooklands. 

There have been a number of different things happening in our lives lately, so gardening has taken something of a back seat. Instead, I thought I would showcase the area of our local gardens that we know as “The Bowl” and Brooklands Park. For those who have been to New Plymouth, these are the upper reaches of Pukekura Park, a wonderful legacy from a much earlier generation,  close to the centre of the city.

This was WOMAD weekend – the world music festival which travels the globe. It is a huge event for our small city and I wanted to share the beauty of the location which accommodates 3 large stages and 3 small stages, plus all the other accoutrements of festivals.

The entrances alone set the scene. That is Mark in the coral pink tee shirt, standing by George’s tree. I wrote a short tribute to George Fuller when he died. A former curator of the park for many years, he set up camp beneath that puriri tree to protest plans to remove it in order to widen the road access. In this, he was successful, as can be seen. George may be dead but his tree lives on.

The entire WOMAD festival takes place within the embrace of trees. I particularly like the small Dell Stage for its intimacy and charm.

Adjacent to The Dell is this lily pond. It is a good exercise in knowing your water lilies. Some lilies S P R E A D to take up all the water, which rather defeats the reflective qualities. If you plan on growing a few water lilies at home, my advice is not to plant these overly strong triffids but to seek out smaller growing, named varieties which may be less inclined to stage a takeover bid. There are easier maintenance tasks than thinning water lilies.

From memory, the white sculpture is based on cloud formations and was placed to be reflected in the water. To me, I fear, they are more evocative of toothy molars but each to their own.

We were at WOMAD this time because I was involved. Nothing musical – I do not have a musical bone in my body, although Mark is an ageing rock and pop drummer from way back. He still has his drum kit, though I banished it to the shed rather than a spare bedroom. I was interviewing winemaker Allan Scott, a leading light in the Marlborough wine industry and one of a fairly small number of independent wineries in an increasingly multinational, corporate industry. The session was accompanied by wine tasting (five wines) and food matching with canapes. It is a situation where I rather regretted my unbreakable rule of never drinking when presenting to an audience. Sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay, Gewurtztraminer, Riesling and Pinot noir – but not a drop passed my lips until we had finished.

One of the other aspects of our WOMAD that really impresses me is the zero waste priority. Unlike most events that attract thousands of people, WOMAD is simply remarkable for its total absence of rubbish on the ground and the use of compostable or reusable serving dishes and drinking vessels. It is proof that with a good set-up and plenty of good management, litter and plastic waste can be eliminated.

Our white crepe myrtle

It is a three day festival, but we piked after two days. We are not used to crowds and noise, and come Sunday, we were both happy to have a quiet day in the garden at home. Down in our park the crepe myrtle (lagerstroemia) is like blossom. It does not often bloom like this but this is an indication of the long, hot, summer we had this year. Usually we grow it for its attractive bark and the flowers are sparse and pass without attracting attention.

Colchicums are not the same as autumn crocus

The colchicums are also flowering – in the rockery but also naturalised down in the park area that we now call the meadow. That is surely a sign that autumn is here.

Daisy, daisy

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I’m half crazy all for the love of you”

These days such songs running through the brain on repeat are called ‘ear worms’. It may interest you, as it interested me, to find that this particular song was written in 1892. It may have been an ear worm for 126 years now. 

In sorting out my haberdashery – in other words, reorganising my sewing desk – I came across this delight, the Daisy Disc. I can’t recall having noticed this before so it must date back to my very late mother-in-law whose sewing desk I inherited. I see it has the price of 30c on it, so I can date it to post July 10, 1967 when New Zealand swapped to decimal currency. It was the instruction folder that delighted me, with its pictures of projects and the following bold statement:

                “Your DAISY DISC is as versatile as your crochet hook, or knitting needles. Give it the same care and you will have hours of rewarding pleasure.”

The instructions are something else. Step one was fine – wind the wool 2 or 3 times around opposite spokes in turn. But then we come to the second step:

“Fig. 2.

Break wool about 12 inches from the DAISY DISC and thread through needle. Pass needle under petals 1 and 12, bring back over petal 1, then under 12 and 11, under 11 and 10 (ie under two and back over one etc. See Fig 3.)”

Got that? Then we get to the instructions on how to join the daisies, because of course you want to join a whole lot of daisies to make your daisy dress, evening top or handbag. For this, you must be able to read a crochet pattern. I once went to night classes to learn how to crochet. In self defence, this was back in the very late 1970s and I wanted to be able to make crochet lampshades with long, silken fringes that were all the rage back then. So I think I can decode the instructions as far as encasing the first unsuspecting daisy in a crochet frame is concerned, but to join in the second daisy confounded me.

“Work as for 1st. up to 1st 5 ch loop., 2 ch., sl. st. in 1 loop of centre st. of a corner 5 ch. loop on 1st. daisy, 2 ch., 1 tr. back in same petal on 2nd daisy. (1ch. sl. st.in next 3 ch. loop on 1st daisy, 1 ch. 1 d.c. back in the next petal on 2nd daisy) twice.”

Followed that, have you? Because we are only half way through the instructions on how to join your daisies. There is a whole lot more. This is way more complex than knitting or crocheting peggy squares and I know what the abbreviations of  tr., d.c., ch., and sl. st. mean. It might as well be double dutch, otherwise.

I looked at the suggested projects for our daisy motifs and I was struggling to find a clear winner. Would it be the wildly impractical baby blanket, the adorned evening shoe or the daisy earrings? But then I spotted the fez-style hat. Ladies and gents, that must be the clear winner.

One day I must find the instructions for The Lost Art of Camellia Waxing. I use capitals to give sufficient gravitas to this largely forgotten activity. I am sure I stowed that somewhere safe as an interesting hobby option for ladies at home with a great deal of time on their hands.

I went looking for daisies in the garden to illustrate this post but came up rather short. I did not go far enough, I tell you. I should have done some googling first. Their family of Asteraceae is huge. Not just the obvious asters which are so pretty in flower at this time of early autumn, but also cosmos, tagetes (marigolds), sunflowers, echinacea, rudbeckia, even dahlias. I was sad that one of our largest and showiest daisy plants, the spectacular Montanoa bipinnatifida (Mexican tree daisy) died last year. But Mark has just told me that we still have it. A seedling has emerged near the original plant. The monarch butterflies will get to feed on it again.

The monarcnh on the montanoa in very late autumn

I used to sew. A lot. Can you tell? These days, i garden instead. Even more.

 

 

The end of the long, hot summer is nigh

Belladonnas – a roadside flower for us

Summer continues here with temperatures in the mid to late mid twenties during the day, and often not dropping much below 17 at night. That is celsius, of course. With our near-constant high humidity, it feels hotter. Dry heat is easier to live in. But we are not complaining. Last summer never really arrived and we would have been lucky to have a single day where temperatures reached 25 or 26, rather than the three months so far this year.

Our belladonnas range from pure white through pretty pastel pink to sugar candy pinks and all shades between

What is interesting is that while the temperatures haven’t really dropped, the garden is starting to tell us that autumn is coming. The belladonnas are already past their peak, Cyclamen hederifolium is in full bloom  as is the tiny, dainty autumn snowflake, Leucojum autumnalis. Moraea polystachya has started its blooming marathon.Even the first nerine has opened and I spotted a flower on an autumn flowering camellia – C. microphylla. Haemanthus coccineus is out and the exquisite Rhodophiala bifida have already been and almost gone, their lovely trumpet blooms touched with gold dust now withering away for another year.

Cyclamen hederafolium seed down happily for us now

Some plants are triggered into growth or blooming by temperature, some by seasonal rain (we can do the South African autumn bulbs so well because we get summer rain, even in a drought year such as this has been) and some are triggered by day length. While our weather conditions are still indubitably summer, the day length is shortening and these plants are programmed to respond.

We don’t get sharp seasonal changes because our temperature has quite a small range from both summer to winter and day to night. It will be another three months before the trees start to colour. But the garden is coming out of its summer hiatus and entering autumn, whether we are ready or not.

Stachys Bella Grigio is giving up the ghost. Whiffing off, as we say.

Some plants just like to confound you. I wrote earlier about Stachys ‘Bella Grigio’, the startling white, felted variety that was so happily ensconced in a new garden. Booming away, even. It was setting so many offshoots that I thought I would be able to carpet many square metres by the end of the season. Well, it was an ‘upanddieonyou’ after all. It has been upping and dying like mad in the last weeks. Otherwise known as ‘whiffing off’ here.

I dug up a couple of wilting plants to see what was going on. They are dying from the top down. Their roots are fine. As an aside, if you are puzzled by why a plant is clearly dying, basically they die either bottom up or top down so it is always interesting to carry out an autopsy. Each of these plants was carrying 30 or more offshoots. I took off the ones with roots and have tried replanting them and I thinned out the offsets which had not yet established their own roots because it looked a bit as if the plants were smothering themselves to death in their desire to reproduce. There was no sign of insect infestation.

“It’s probably climatic,” Mark said. His thinking is that we are too humid and it has been particularly so this summer, whereas that felted white foliage is usually indicative of alpine plants. I think it is varietal. I have heard too many stories from others who have experienced specimens of this plant thriving, established and growing well before suddenly keeling over and dying. I cleaned up two plants and replanted the offsets out of curiosity. If I have to do this every year to keep these plants alive, then I am afraid I will decide very soon that it simply is not worth the effort.

We have mown the meadow for the season. Well, Lloyd has. With our special sickle bar mower, imported from Germany. We are still learning how to best manage the meadow in our conditions and Mark thinks that we are leaving the mowing too late and that it would be best done soon after Christmas for the first mow with a follow up in autumn. Maybe next year.

Mark has just declared that the sickle bar mower is otherwise known as the primary herbivore here. He has been reading about eco-systems and wondering what we could be introducing to NZ, given that our primary herbivore, the moa, is now extinct.

You can tell our climate is mild. We have begonias as a roadside hedge.

Requiem for a tree

Mark and Dudley inspect

I may have been a little premature in my post this morning that expressed relief that we had escaped so lightly from ex-tropical Cyclone Gita. We are still discovering damage but nothing to eclipse the mighty fallen gum tree on the neighbour’s farm.

Mark climbed down into the hole to give some sense of scale to the uprooted root ball

We know some of the history of these trees because they were planted by Mark’s great grandfather back in the 1870s. It seems likely that they were part of government-supplied seed or plants to trial alternative timber options for this recently settled colony. The early pioneers had already felled most of the accessible mighty kauri trees. We have a few gum trees, Pinus muricata and radiata dating from the same time, along with our remarkable rimu trees. He was a tree planter, was Thomas Jury, and this land had already been cleared of its native tawa when he took ownership.

Still standing

It isn’t clear why this tree fell. It was of a similar size and stature to the left hand tree and in a sheltered position. The winds were very strong but it is not as if these eucalypts have dense canopies of foliage which act as a sail in the wind. But there is a sense of sadness to see a mighty tree lying on the ground.

It must be said that the sadness to see a bit of family history gone is tinged with relief that this one is not our problem to clean up. It will be no mean feat chainsawing up this monster of twisted hard wood, even if the yield will be a mountain of good firewood.

Beautiful bark on many of the eucalyptus species